In defence of Thames Water
From our UK edition
Perhaps the greatest honour ever paid to Queen Victoria was to have a sewage-pumping engine named after her. Both she and Albert – and the future Edward VII, plus Alexandra – had the delight of becoming bywords for the mighty machines constructed by Joseph Bazalgette to lift waste from the depths of his (literally) ground-breaking London sewer system. Listening to Thames Unfiltered, a new six-part podcast from the Evening Standard, I was amused to learn that the trend now favours the Greek gods. Among the eight barges constructed to serve the Tideway Tunnel sewer, completed last year, are a Zeus, a Poseidon, an Apollo, a Phoebe and, er, a Churchill. What else to give those who have everything?
